Yuki ni natte (To become snow)
by Yui Miyamoto
Summary: Seishirou asks Subaru what he thinks of sakura before their year is up.


**fandom - Tokyo Babylon**  
 **title - yuki ni natte.**  
 **pairing - sei + su**  
 **rating - pg**  
 **description - Seishirou asks Subaru what he thinks of sakura before their year is up.**

 **Disclaimer – Tokyo Babylon belongs to Clamp. I love it more than you'd like to imagine. ^^;;;**

 **Yuki ni natte. (To become snow.)**  
 **By miyamoto yui**

From this darkness, the night gives birth to glistening redness while becoming one with the unnatural white patches, on this all-too-familiar, tree-lined avenue. Whether an illusion made from the last of her power or a glass-ceiling slowly, yet unwillingly, broken by my own fingers, she disintegrates into the mound made by the irregularly-shaped snowflakes.

Like a sketch with a pencil line to mark my lips, I watch her, waiting for myself to react to the scene drawn out before me. After all, you have to provide me with stimulus in order for me to move my body. However, my heart will always be covered in that eternal snow, each snowflake taking a drip away.

What happens when an IV keeps the body's fluids alive when the spirit is already forgone? Or rather, forgotten along the way towards death, a body disintegrating into the ground and becoming nothing more than a drop of water again?

She closes her eyes and I lift her up to kiss the lips I've touched a million times with my own. The blood coming through her teeth and into mine makes my lips momentarily warm, a temperature that I don't associate with this woman I call 'Mother'.

I do not know if she is my real mother. I don't recollect if she told me she gave birth to me. Even if she did, it wouldn't matter. A 'woman' and a 'mother' are separate psyches in each female, yet these two separate entities are one and the same time within my own Mother.  
It's like those who do not know snow.

It all looks the same from the coating of the surface until you delve further and further.  
You hope that there is an end to the pile that continues to grow…

But like sand, it goes on forever,  
whether or not it's been washed away.

Initially, you want to touch it because you want to know what it feels like in between your fingers. Just like a child, adults think this fundamentally. Then, you find out how it makes your fingers tingle into a second of numbness. In the next split-second, you either enjoy pushing into it with your hand or you take it away as if you've been burned.

It happens again when I pull out my dagger-like hand.

Into my memory, time takes away her face. She is replaced by governors, zealous religious leaders, and other socially important people. Yet I strike in the same exact way. Her image fades, but the jolt of penetrating through bone, flesh, and heart, the three things that create humans, with my palm resembling the shape of a flame, gives me a fleeting electrical shock.

Once more, I instantly smother out the cage of a being's carnal existence from the root of everything: That damned 'heart'.

A heart is what creates a human? What ludicrous haughtiness.  
When you follow it, you are a fool towards others. When you go against it, you are a joke to yourself.  
And so, where it is when you do not care for either classification? You are branded a devil by nature, having not being able to exert independence nor co-existence with society.

Heart, indeed. Didn't Natsume Soseki imply that humans distance themselves through egocentric tendencies in order to deal with difficult situations and people? And yet, everyone is still as vulnerable as someone sitting next to them on a train?

The 'heart'…It all means the acceptance of change…

Today, the hem of my trenchcoat brushes against the face of some high school boy, a son of someone in the Diet. I kneel down again to touch that lifeless face with my thumb. Coating his lower lip with his own crimson paint, I smirk momentarily. Then, my own face becomes a Noh mask with thin, almost non-existent lines for a mouth and small, dark hollow spaces for eyes.  
"You are more beautiful now," I say as I get up again while my eyes linger on those shocked, yet resolved eyes.

The open eyes stare at me so passionately: mesmerized and confused, yet admiringly also.  
It all, to them, means 'freedom'. Rules do not exist to you. You are lucky.

Yet, aren't you the one who chose that?  
I am not so sure. I am doing what my mother has done. Being used to something is not exactly 'choice'. Talent and enjoyment do not exactly go together, you know.  
You are truly lucky if they'll ever coincide in your lifetime.

So, everyone, no matter how much they exert their individuality, dies with a certain arrogance, pretending they've always been prepared when all they've done is quiver until the climax of their psychological epiphany or torture arrives.

I do not have time, nor do I wish to waste my time, thinking further than the line of time permits. After all, dead is dead. Answers will not come up and neither will the living give sufficient, honest answers all the time.  
You make your own reality. So, is my power really so special?

I chuckle a bit as I look at my fingers.  
They remind me of hers, the ones that caressed me under the ears each time she wanted to kiss me, surprising me with how she would do it. Mother was so interesting. If she wasn't, I would have been so bored that I would've left her without a second thought.

I lower myself to take one last look. Taking his defined, soft jaw into my right hand, my eyes take one last imprint of tangible beauty. Then, I drop his head to the cement ground. It falls as fast as a camellia.  
Now, I fly through the night to take a shower and put on the white coat and glasses. Smiling, I am sure he will come. He is a little predictable that way.

Whether it's the throbbing ecstasy I feel from the ache of his hands or other reasons beyond reason, I can feel his presence.  
The bells of the clinic jingle and he enters. He's not here for long.

Today, he can't even drink coffee, and yet, he comes all the way here to tell me, "I just had to see you."  
This is the same boy who is usually late for our dates. He is also the same one who apologizes so readily to all the cold-hearted people who shove him in the local trains.

Once in a while, he'll come to surprise me in little ways.

He is the one that goes out of his way to see me here in Shinjuku.

Maybe, you are reacting to me because I give you the opportunity to. Isn't that it? All animals work through instinct. You are just more sensitive than others because of your bloodline. That must be the reason.  
I don't understand "I just had to see you" at all.

"Good morning, Seishirou-san," he'll cough while turning red behind the gloved fist that covers his, now-unreadable, mouth to apologize for not saying so when he came in two seconds ago.  
I laugh and the white coat becomes a little tight.

The mask breaks just a little each day like this.

"Hokuto-chan said you had a cold." Without knowing, he'll reach out his hands to touch my face to make sure I don't have a fever when he gets sick more often than I'll ever be.  
I put my hand to the back of my head and laugh, "I told her I only had the sniffles. She exaggerated."

For one second, I almost thank her.  
These seconds tend to accumulate though…

He looks up to my face with a curious and all-the-more concerned expression. His eyebrows become knit, rising just a little. His lips part a bit in a small pout. It's like he is horrified and worried simultaneously, and neither reaction is winning.  
I want to rip this face open to preserve it a little longer on ice. It is funny, though, because I do not know the reason as to why.

And we end up taking the train to Ueno just for a few moments. There are a million people doing exactly what we are doing. But, we just stand in the middle of all the bustle with the rows and rows of trees extending to what seems to forever on either side of us.  
Ignoring everyone, we watch one another in silence.

We both look away quietly.

The snow falls one by one with the wind, but I know this white isn't that of winter.

It is spring. In a world where life is renewed and rebirth begins, I again remember it is my time to die. And the boy in front of me chooses to turn his head towards mine when I'm already staring at him so carefully.

I ask almost in spite of myself, "Do you really believe that these cherry blossoms were created from the blood of dead corpses? Or rather, what do you think of the people that put them there?"  
He closes he his eyes and points his head towards the ground. This time, he is the one that is eluding my questions.

Just when I think I've struck a chord with that almost sickeningly disgusting compassion of his, he opens his eyes. He tells me in a serious voice matching the complicated, clashing emotions on his face, "A year ago, I wouldn't have said what I say will now."

For a few seconds, we continue to look at one another intensely.

Then, he finishes, after taking a deep breath, "I have to hear the 'why' of both sides, but since I can't, who am I to judge? I exorcise spirits and call them when I need to as part of my family profession. That doesn't mean I am any better on the other side."  
He sighs while running his fingers through his hair nervously. Just like always, he grins with his teeth showing. But in this grin, he closes his eyes as if tears will emerge.

When he opens them, he focuses on my face again.

That is probably one of the prettiest expressions I've ever seen him have.

Pressing onward, I joke, "And how about if you found out it was me?"

He smiles thoughtfully. He kneels to the ground to pick up pieces of sakura that've been smashed onto the floor. "I would care for you just the same, Seishirou-san."

I stand there. I know I should be moved, but my 'heart' does not react. Does this really mean that I win the bet? Didn't I want to win in the first place?  
He looks up to me and I do not ask why. He does not give an explanation.

His finger pokes the right side of my mouth, almost touching my teeth. "I've never seen you smile like that before."  
I didn't know I could do such a thing…

When we go back on the station, Subaru goes into the uncrowded train. He steps forward to the other side and looks out the window. I stand behind him, watching his emotions change through his reflection.  
As the doors open briefly for the Ikebukuro stop, I lose sight of him and become faced with the haunting scene of our second encounter. It replays in cut film strips before me.

"With everything changing so fast in this city, do you think this platform will be the same years from now, Subaru-kun?" I whisper into his ear.  
He doesn't have time to answer. The doors close again and I see Subaru's eyes watching the same scene from memory appear before him. I hug him from behind as my body becomes icier than before.  
I won't let him see my eyes.

When we part, I am asleep again for the rest of the day. The darkness comes and I will dress in my black trenchcoat. I will walk through the streets that are filled with so many people and head to my next destination. It is strange though, we are all passionately walking towards destructions of our own device.

On a whim, for the second time that day, around midnight, I stare down at that cursed avenue of trees which I am named after.

I feel like I'm drowning under all the petals of snow. I pull my coat a bit closer.

I now understand my Mother more than ever before. I wasn't sure if I heard her or if it was in my mind that day I killed her, but I thought she whispered, "Yuki ni natte."

To become snow,  
this is what this city teaches you to be.

And yet you, Subaru-kun, have chosen to fight against this disease, trying to act as if you are untouched by it. Except, because you do not know where to put all that negativity, you bury it within yourself and it's eating you away without you knowing.

While I wait impatiently to become just this under your pure hands.

Don't you know how you've pushed through the hardened roots of my corpse-like existence? Don't you know that when one embodies ugliness, they will always look for nothing but beauty in order to cling onto it?  
And when you can no longer let go, you ask to be killed off?

As a shadow, I visit your balcony. I watch you sleep restlessly, crying with your hands hugging your pillow. My fingers touch the warm glass of the sliding door.  
"I'll let you live for a few more days," I whisper, hoping it will reach your ears, making your hands bleed for me.  
But selfishly, I want more than your hands to drip in my name.

However, I do not know if my words are meant for you or for me.

What I do know is that when the bet is over, the sakura will neither be liberated nor trapped. Time will stop until you, Subaru-kun, make it run again.

Isn't that the fate of every snowflake and flower?

After all, where can a tree rise to when all there is _is_ a bright glass ceiling that pretends to be sunlight? But you never know.  
Just because you can't break out doesn't mean something cannot come in.

Surprise me, Subaru-kun, as I become buried more and more like my mother…  
…and when the time comes, I will smile sincerely, once, like you did for me the one year I lived as something almost human…

In one single moment, you will understand the true nature of why the sakura are so deeply beautiful as you count the days before they die.

But I won't tell you anything in that instant. You'll imagine it had meaning as you always do and I will pretend that it was just a whim,

piling the hurt and happiness, piece by piece.

 **Owari.**  
 **-**  
 **Author's note:** With a sigh of relief, these words that were held for so long inside, finally came out. Forgoing sleep, I wanted to write this short fic to you.  
My months here in Tokyo have taught more things than I've imagined. And Tokyo, which was already so dear to me, became even more precious as I began to understand that then or now, through Clamp in 1989-1993 and my experience now, these unchanging subjects within the manga are like frozen snow. And yet this lonely place is one I love dearer than ever imagined.  
And, having been to Rainbow Bridge so many times, I think I can finally accept Seishirou's death with this fic.

I know I'll have to work more to regain the writing months I've lost, but I hope my rustiness doesn't show too much.

Thank you for always staying with me, even with my erratic writing schedule. ^_^

And thank you, Rei-chan, for always helping me!

Most of all, Winnie, this is to you! I MISS YOU!

Love always,  
Yui

5/18/2006 9:17:01 AM – LA  
5/19/2006 1:17:01 AM - Tokyo


End file.
